Friday, May 4, 2012

13
comments:

Lol. I think the only time I ever freaked out was when I was around 7 or 8 years old and my uncle showed up at our front door wearing an awesome, realistic looking frankenstine costume with towing chains attached to his wrists like he just broke free.

GAH I was signed into my daughters acct again could u delete that last post AND repost it under me.....sorry, again..... :PI had a neighbor that would set up this god awful display. I had to pass twice a day to get to the bus...I'd mentally prepare myself, cross the street and walk REALLY fast.

If a kid's lucky there's one house somewhere nearby that goes all out for Halloween & in later years we get to reminisce..."oh man, there was this cool house down the block & every Halloween they..." set up The Haunted Hellish Garage of Horror ;-)

I've been on the giving end of a few scares over the years, either at home haunts or Universal, and it's always the folks who aren't too proud to lose their cool and look a little silly who end up having the most fun.!

Back in second grade, I went to a school carnival (back before the PC Nation partnered with the Religious Reich to get rid of Halloween carnivals at schools). Naturally, I wanted to go into the haunted house. Looking back on it, it was a fairly silly affair, but in my mind it was DEAD serious. As we passed through, the various monsters completely ignored my dad, and focused completely on me. As I looked over into Dracula's coffin, which I was certain was just a prop, Drac himself reached out and grabbed my arm! It's a wonder that I didn't wet myself, and I'm sure my screams were heard outside of the building!

The clencher of the whole thing was the final room. In the corner was a mummmy (which, again, appeared to just be a prop under the black lights). A tiny, cartoon mouse style door was the only way out, so we had to crawl. As my dad crawled through, the Mummy started moving...groaning and shambling as he advanced on me! Again, I started screaming and began to push my dad through the door (I'm fairly certain dad, who was highly amused by all this, started crawling even slower). As we exited into the school cafeteria, I felt the mummy's hand brush against my foot. I was CERTAIN that I had just barely escaped a horrible death at the hands of an undead monster!

This cartoon, to me, perfectly captures that feeling. As a kid, even though a part of you knows it's all pretend, your imagination takes over. It all seems SO real...and a part of you WANTS it to be. You come out feeling so ALIVE, knowing for sure you JUST escaped being food for some vile fiend of the pit. For me, this was such a major moment of my childhood. It cemented my love of all things spooky, and it made me want to create my own haunts to scare others. Yes, it was TOTALLY worth it!

There are so many things to love about these comics Rot, but one thing that continues to amaze and delight is the way you get the glow around the moon. So simple and effective. Enjoy your time off.

This week's comic got me to thinking about my own school Halloween carnival. Since my birthday is right before Halloween, the carnival was like my personal celebration. My mom used to buy all of the cupcakes and such for my party at the carnival. And, to make it even more fun, my parties were always Halloween themed and my friends wore their costumes. I'm sure their parents hated having to do a "dry run" before Halloween though.

Thats great! Ive been there in my youngster days! Now it seems those cheerful halloween memories arent what they used to be in the late 80s early 90s. I try to re-create those memories for my son, he loves halloween and all my horror memorabilia!